Give facebook some love

Where are you spending your time on social media? 

I don't mean where you're scrolling: rather where are you posting and most active in order to attract visitors?

I think many of us have got distracted trying different channels, enjoying the ease of just sticking a photo on Insta, taking a sneaky peak at stupid videos on TikTok. 

We've moaned about the changes to Twitter (X), thought that facebook was 'past it'. If you're anything like me, you've probably also felt a bit tired of social media and wondered whether it's worth the effort. 

This blog is to suggest you do one thing, and really focus on it for one month. Facebook. 

Why? 

Because despite what you might have read/thought, many of the people you want to target are still on facebook. Some are even on there more frequently than you might have thought. Facebook is really productive for tourism businesses. 

Because it's stood the test of time, and many people feel comfortable with it, despite all the shiny alternatives.

Because you get plenty of space to use images, videos and words - every post can act as your own immediate mini-website.

Because facebook gets bookings and results - it drives traffic to websites, sign-ups on mailing lists and buying messages.

Because it can scale very quickly, and it's easy to collaborate with others in your area to build followers. 

A couple of things to bear in mind: 

You need to be consistent, and post fairly often to build engagement and get results.

You don't need millions of followers but you do need a few followers who like what you do enough to want to share your posts.

When you're building followers and engagement, it's best not to link to external websites etc. You can do that every now and then but facebook likes to support posts that keep followers on facebook. So write some 'complete' posts that explain whatever you want to say in the post, without sending to other places. 

Keep going. Don't stop posting in the Winter because you're closed or have fewer visitors. It takes more effort to re-build followers if you don't post more consistently. 

One big photo or video tends to work better than lots of smaller ones in a gallery. 

Ask questions and think about what you can say to get followers to comment - that really helps to build engagement and more followers. 

Don't simply use your Insta posts on facebook. It looks rubbish and lazy when you just use an Insta post littered with hashtags on facebook. 

Use the facebook insights to see what's working, when's the best time to post for your business.